Angola Introduction

Civil war has been the norm in Angola since independence from Portugal in 1975.
A 1994 peace accord between the government and the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA) provided for the integration of former UNITA insurgents
into the government and armed forces. A national unity government was installed
in April of 1997, but serious fighting resumed in late 1998, rendering hundreds
of thousands of people homeless. Up to 1.5 million lives may have been lost in
fighting over the past quarter century.

HISTORY
In 1482, when the Portuguese first landed in what is now northern Angola, they
encountered the Kingdom of the Congo, which stretched from modern Gabon in the
north to the Kwanza River in the south. Mbanza Congo, the capital, had a population
of 50,000 people. South of this were various important states, of which the Kingdom
of Ndongo, ruled by the Ngola (King), was most significant. Modern Angola derives
its name from the king of Ndongo. The Portuguese gradually took control of the
coastal strip throughout the 16th century by a series of treaties and wars. The
Dutch occupied Luanda from 1641-48, providing a boost for anti-Portuguese states.
In 1648, Brazilian-based Portuguese forces re-took Luanda and initiated a process
of military conquest of the Congo and Ndongo states that ended with Portuguese
victory in 1671. Full Portuguese administrative control of the interior did not
occur until the beginning of the 20th century.

Portugal's primary interest
in Angola quickly turned to slavery. The slaving system began early in the 16th
century with the purchase from African chiefs of people to work on sugar plantations
in Sao Tome, Principe, and Brazil. Many scholars agree that by the 19th century,
Angola was the largest source of slaves not only for Brazil, but for the Americas,
including the United States. By the end of the 19th century, a massive forced
labor system had replaced formal slavery and would continue until outlawed in
1961. It was this forced labor that provided the basis for development of a plantation
economy and, by the mid-20th century, a major mining sector. Forced labor combined
with British financing to construct three railroads from the coast to the interior,
the most important of which was the transcontinental Benguela railroad that linked
the port of Lobito with the copper zones of the Belgian Congo and what is now
Zambia.

Colonial economic development did not translate into social development
for native Angolans. The Portuguese regime encouraged white immigration, especially
after 1950, which intensified racial antagonisms. As decolonization progressed
elsewhere in Africa, Portugal, under the Salazar and Caetano dictatorships, rejected
independence and treated its African colonies as overseas provinces. Consequently,
three independence movements emerged: the Popular Movement for the Liberation
of Angola (MPLA), with a base among Kimbundos and the mixed-race intelligentsia
of Luanda, and links to communist parties in Portugal and the East Bloc; the National
Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), with an ethnic base in the Bakongo region of
the north and links to the United States and the Mobutu regime in Kinshasa; and
the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by Jonas
Malheiro Savimbi with an ethnic and regional base in the Ovimbundo heartland in
the center of the country.

From the early 1960s, elements of these movements
fought against the Portuguese. A 1974 coup d'etat in Portugal established a military
government that promptly ceased the war and agreed to hand over power to a coalition
of the three movements. The coalition quickly broke down and turned into a civil
war. By late 1975, Cuban forces had intervened on behalf of the MPLA and South
African troops for UNITA, effectively internationalizing the Angolan conflict.
In control of Luanda and the coastal strip (and increasingly lucrative oil fields),
the MPLA declared independence on November 11, 1975, the day the Portuguese abandoned
the capital. Augustinho Neto became the first president, followed by Jose Eduardo
dos Santos in 1979.

Civil war between UNITA and the MPLA continued until 1989.
For much of this time, UNITA controlled vast swaths of the interior and was backed
by U.S. resources and South African troops. Similarly, tens of thousands of Cuban
troops remained in support of the MPLA, often fighting South Africans on the front
lines. A U.S.-brokered agreement resulted in withdrawal of foreign troops in 1989
and led to the Bicesse Accord in 1991, which spelled out an electoral process
for a democratic Angola under the supervision of the United Nations. When UNITA's
Jonas Savimbi failed to win the first round of the presidential election in 1992
(he won 40% to Dos Santos's 49%, which meant a runoff), he called the election
fraudulent and returned to war. Another peace accord was brokered in Lusaka, Zambia,
signed in 1994. This agreement, too, collapsed in 1998 when Savimbi renewed the
war for a second time, claiming the MPLA was not fulfilling its obligations. The
UN Security Council voted on August 28, 1997, to impose sanctions on UNITA. The
Angolan military launched a massive offensive in 1999 which destroyed UNITA's
conventional capacity and recaptured all major cities previously held by Savimbi's
forces. Savimbi then declared a return to guerrilla tactics, which continue to
keep much of the country in turmoil. The prospect is for continued low-level guerrilla
warfare that will keep much of the country insecure.

People of Angola - Learn about
the population, age structure, birth and death rate, sex ratio, nationality, ethnic
groups, religions, languages, and literacy in Angola

Government
and Politics in Angola - Profiles the country name, government type, administrative
divisions, independence, national holiday, constitution, legal system, suffrage,
executive, legislative, and judicial branches, political parties and leaders,
and a flag description of Angola.

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